“Its gotta have been two years since I last went to LSC. For those not in the know, LSC stands for Lecture Series Committee. Its a student group that, among other things shows movies on campus. I think the last one I went to was Shooter. They showed Annie Hall a few weeks ago (which is on the AFI list) and I was so pissed that I found out a day too late. There are few other places where admission, a small Sprite, and a bag of Twizzlers only costs you 5.75 Makes it worth dealing with the uncomfortable seats. Back in the day, when I lived in a dorm two buildings over from the screening room, it was not uncommon for me to come in pj’s and slippers, with a blanket to snuggle in and a pillow to sit on. Although this time, besides the unpleasantness of the seat, there was this creepy old man who sad down right next to me. Seriously, people, movie theater etiquette. If there’s plenty of seats, always leave at least a one seat buffer between you and the stranger beside you. I was scared he was gonna start asking me for my number, saying that the back of my head is ridiculous.
Now Im in an Athena cluster, waiting for a buddy, typing up this review that I expected would hafta wait til morning. And I really like this keyboard. The keys are really bouncy. Moving on.
Normally, I dont particularly care for war films. In principle, I dont necessarily have a problem with war. I just dont care to pay attention to politics (we’re not gonna have the why argument about that now), and these types of movies tend to be uber politcally preachy. Im not informed enough (by choice) to take a stand on one side or the other, but the one thing I damn well know for sure is that I am completely behind our troops themselves. I feel that reguardless of your politics, every American should be able to say that. But lately, something is just drawing me to these films. With Brothers this afternoon and The Messenger last week Im really rackin’ them up. And I’ve been dying to get my hands on Stop-loss, but haven’t had any luck. I was actually looking foward to this one all week, since I’d heard so many good things. It made me a little sad that I didnt go last night as originally planned, but I think Bob Saget was a worthy replacement.
I def enjoyed the film, but I think it mighta been built up too much. I’ve heard a lot of best picture talk, and while I’d support the nod, I dont know that I’d support a win. There wasn’t much story (and we’ve been over this many times, I like narrative), which made the scenes feel a bit disconnected from each other. However, individually each one of those scenes was fantastic. So the movie centers around a bomb squad team in the army, which means that most of the scenes are these really intense and nerve wracking things where the dude’s trying to diffuse a bomb. Needless to say, edge of my seat the whole time.
Great characters, as well. Man guy, Sg james, was played by Jeremy Renner. If your knowledge of the Buffyverse is comparable to mine, you’ll know him as Angel’s sire Penn. He was a good combination of reckless, badass, and admirable soldier. Although his obligatory big self revelatory breakthrough wasn’t quite as epic as they tend to be in these films. Yes, Im actually disappointed in the lack of a cliche. The one I really felt for was Spc Eldridge played by Brian Geraghty. I spent the whole movie trying to figure out where I knew him from. Something told me Jarhead, which IMDB confirmed, but I dont specifically remember him there. He also looked a bit like Corey Feldman in Stand By me, which may have been what threw me. He was the more, for lack of a better word, sensitive soldier. He’s really the one I held my breath for whenever they were in a tight spot. Also brief appearances by Guy Pearce, Evangeline Lilly, David Morse (who I so didnt recognize), and Christian Camargo (Dexter’s big “”ice truck killer”” bro), and Ralph Fiennes.
The film was shot documentary style, which was a nice touch (added another level of realism) but there was a lot of shakey cameras. Not quite Blair Witch level of shakey, but enough to annoy my headache-y head. Very happy I did get to see this well before Oscar season, so now I know what all that buzz is about. We’ll see what its competition looks like over the next few months
The Hurt Locker – \m/ \m/ \m/ \n